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New York Plans Surveillance Veil For Downtown
News.com is reporting that a security system modeled after London's "Ring of Steel" is coming to New York City. The plan, to include license plate readers and over 3,000 public and private security cameras, aims to aid officials in tracking and catching criminals. "But critics question the plan's efficacy and cost, as well as the implications of having such heavy surveillance over such a broad swath of the city. [...] The license plate readers would check the plates' numbers and send out alerts if suspect vehicles were detected. The city is already seeking state approval to charge drivers a fee to enter Manhattan below 86th Street, which would require the use of license plate readers. If the plan is approved, the police will most likely collect information from those readers too, Kelly said."
Another brick in the wall.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The Sad Case of the Spotted Owl
by Tom DeWeese (June 20, 2007)
Environmentalists are quick to lecture the rest of us about the ways of nature. Don't clean the dead trees off the forest floor, it's natural. Cattle and horses on the range aren't native, so let the grizzles and wolves devour them, it's natural. Man isn't part of the ecology, lock him out of vast areas of land, it's natural. It's interesting to note how the "natural" argument only applies when it is used to impose the radical environmental agenda. Case in point, the Northern Spotted Owl.
Spotted owls, we were told a decade ago, were disappearing because big bad timber companies were cutting down "old growth" forests. So the environmental movement rushed to the forests, hugged the trees and issued news releases to decry the evils of the logging industry. Save the owl. Save the trees. Kill the timber industry.
Of course, that was exactly the point. Kill the timber industry. As a result of the hysteria to save the "endangered" owls, U.S. timber sales were reduced by 80-90%, forcing saw mills to close, loggers to go broke and whole towns which depended on the industry to literally disappear. The federal crackdown on the industry caused a shift in U.S. domestic lumber supplies to foreign soils. In short, American industry suffered in the name of protecting the spotted owl. Turns out it wasn't true.
A decade and thousands of broken dreams later, comes this report from the federal government on the real reasons for the spotted owl's endangerment: "Oops."
According to a new government draft plan to save the species, scientists are no longer saying the greatest threat to the Spotted Owl is logging activity. "The draft recovery plan recognizes the primary threat to northern spotted owls as competition with barred owls." According to the report, barred owls are less selective about the habitat they use and the prey they feed upon and are out competing northern spotted owls for habitat and food, causing its decline.
In fact, for the entire decade since the issue emerged on the political scene, the property rights and land use movements have been reporting the fact that the spotted owl is only a sub-species of Mexican spotted owls, which are not endangered at all. Some experts will say the only way to tell the difference between the two is by their accents. (OK, I'm kidding, but this ridiculous story needs some humor). It was no secret that the spotted owl didn't need "old growth forests" to survive, since spotted owls were found living under bridges and in McDonald signs. What it needed was a good food source like any other species. Now we know it was undercut by another owl - a completely natural occurrence.
What was accomplished during the ten-year fight besides the destruction of an entire industry? The establishment of a very radical and dangerous political agenda called the environmental movement. Its power is now so great that no politician dare oppose them. Yet, that power, we now know for certain, was built on a lie. Some in the movement have even candidly admitted that if they didn't have the spotted owl they would have invented something like it to drive their agenda. In fact they did invent it and the purpose was to destroy the timber industry and private property rights. They called it an environmental emergency.
Now the truth has come out. So, will the same federal government which rushed to impose harsh treatment of innocent property owners and industry now roll back those stifling regulations and let freedom breath? Of course not. Agendas are agendas, regardless of the facts.
So instead, after the nation spent millions of dollars to destroy an industry's private property rights, still, the government plans to spend $200 million more on a "barred owl removal plan" in order to save the spotted owl.
And as usual, when a new government debacle is rolled out, there is always an emergency to drive the policy. Now, according to Ren Loheofener, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Did anyone else envision a mannequin covered in a burka with a camera hidden under a veil when they read this title? I was thinking about all of the Palestinians who protest Israel wearing ski mask. I've often wondered if Israel uses IR technology to scan the faces of these people under their masks to ascertain their true identity. I wonder if they use a retinal scanning camera to track who's protesting in their black mask and matching AK 47?
- Yes, I am posting at a -1, and no I will not use a proxy to bypass my circumstances.
In fact, the police here in New Haven, CT (where Yale University is located) use license plate readers to catch people with unpaid parking tickets. They will tow your car if you have outstanding tickets past a certain period of time. The main reason this bugs me is because anything similar to a repeat of an incident which happened to me a few years back, before they started using the automatic plate readers, would now be much more serious.
I got a parking ticket, which I paid, and then a week or so later, The city sent me a notice saying that I had an unpaid ticket from three years earlier. I don't remember ever getting this ticket and I think what must have happened was that they put the ticket on my car and it blew off in the wind or some prankster took it. Naturally, it took me a while to figure out what might have happened and decide to just pay the ticket rather than complain. I sent in the payment and then, a while later, received a notice that I had an unpaid balance with the firm to which New Haven had outsourced their parking ticket collections. After more investigation, I found out that the unpaid balance was not that they had failed to recognize my earlier payment but it was a late fee because the original notice only gave a 15 day deadline to pay (which was only explained in the fine print). If something like this happens again, I could find my car missing and have to spend hours tracking it down at an inopportune time.
Combine just the right mixture of incompetent bureaucracy and high technology and you're in real trouble.
I'm sorry but after hearing numerous stories of police killing unarmed citizens (in one case a quadraplegic man) I have to disagree with this sort of thing. When you join the police force, you have to know that you're signing up for a dangerous job. You know it's possible that someone is going to attempt to flee, attack or even kill you; it's part of the job. So what happens? Rather than police officers risking the occasional death they get all trigger happy and start wasting innocent civilians. That's totally unacceptable.
In America, at least at present, the word is only used as a defense, almost exclusively by those in power once they've been caught doing something wrong. But it is no longer in vogue to apply the term towards actions taken by the government (or corporations--basically, anyone with actual power).
On the news here in the US, whenever you hear about a cop shooting someone, nine times out of ten, the person is killed. When a cop is shot, they usually survive. That's because the police here aren't taught to be reasonable, they are taught to win at any cost. It's an American thing[*], and once you realize this, the war in Iraq makes much more sense.
If a tool is available, it *will* be used, in the US. There are no "gentlemen's rules" here. There are certainly men (and women) of honor, but the institutions themselves are not designed to promote honor--in fact, all told, quite the opposite.
So while the London government might show restraint in their abuse of your world renown surveillance system, I would not transfer the trust your city has earned to the US. Face facts, if a genuinely evil police state took over the UK, they'd be able to build all this stuff anyway if it didn't exist already. Yeah, but at least they'd have to build it. That's something. That will buy time, will draw attention, will be a weakness. If, on the other hand, the system is already in place, the hard part will have already been done for them.
[*] Just read the replies of Americans saying "damn right the cops are going to use overwhelming force! What, do you expect them to let themselves be killed?" (assuming this post garners sufficient attention). A far too influential bloc of Americans have absolutely no issue with the police being Judge, Jury and Executioner. Another useful tidbit when trying to figure out why Americans seem all to willing to give the Executive Branch overreaching powers.
Nobody gave dumb-dumb anything. He and his pet neo-chimp have this delusion that this stuff is there for the taking. The real question is why we haven't yet taken it back- it belongs to the country.